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The article mentioned seven ways in which people (or companies) get ahead due to hidden psychological factors.

One was that companies with what Alter describes as “fluent” names (which are easy to pronounce) and even fluent ticker symbols, perform better in the first week after their initial public offering — because investors who know little about new companies unconsciously invest more in those with fluent names and ticker symbols.

Drunk Tank Pink by Adam Alter

The flip side of this study also shows that invisible factors can also affect how people spend.

Read on to find out five ways you can use these influences to plump up your own bank account — or at least keep yourself from frittering away your funds.

It was a simple experiment: Some researchers offered a limited number of free basketball tickets to graduate students.

The finding was equally simple: People with last names beginning with letters in the second half of the alphabet, N-Z, were quicker to respond. (The good news is that, in another experiment, they were also quicker to post job-search materials online.)

“If you have a last name at the end of the alphabet, you’re used to being called last at school and having to wait,” says Alter. “So when there’s an open opportunity for you to respond at whatever pace you like, you are more quick to respond than someone with a name at the beginning of the alphabet.”

So, when it comes to your pocketbook, if your last name is in the last half of the alphabet, and you face a limited-time-only offer, a flash sale or some other deal, remind yourself that there will be another. If you weren’t planning to buy that item, then there’s no reason to jump on it simply because there’s a deal — it’s still money you didn’t plan to spend.

A psychology department in northern England offered tea and coffee and asked people to contribute to an honesty box for their drinks. But people rarely gave.

The psychologists then conducted a ten-week experiment putting different images above the honesty box — alternating between images of a pair of eyes and images of flowers. The eyes won hands down: Seeing eyes made people give almost three times as much money.

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